The letter largely echoes comments Esper made at a press briefing earlier this week, but the action of sending the letter amps up the Pentagon’s efforts to push back on criticism of its coronavirus response.

Esper ripped the senators in the letter over what he said were “false and misleading” statements about the response.

“I can confidently state, informed by my service leaders and combatant commanders, the U.S. military is maintaining a high state of readiness and the morale of the force remains strong,” Esper added in the letter dated Thursday.

“Civilian leadership of the department has failed to act sufficiently quickly, and has often prioritized readiness at the expense of the health of servicemembers and their families,” the senators wrote. “This failure has adversely affected morale, and, despite the department’s best intentions, undermined readiness.”

The eight-page letter cited several examples, including the coronavirus outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier and Esper pushing decisions on implementing social distancing and other guidance to local commanders.

Current military coronavirus cases: As of Friday, 5,171 service members have been diagnosed with the coronavirus, including 114 who have been hospitalized, 1,978 who have recovered and two who have died.

Esper’s stance: In his letter to Inhofe, Esper maintained the Pentagon has been “ahead of need at every step,” arguing officials “have met or exceeded every request for assistance we have received.”

“That said, on behalf of America’s 2.9 million service members and DoD civilians, I am disappointed that some, especially committee members, would argue that the Defense Department has demonstrated a ‘failure to adequately respond to the ongoing coronavirus disease,’ ” Esper wrote. “Such a statement does not respect the 62,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines currently deployed across the nation in support of their fellow Americans, typically operating away from their families and usually at risk of their own lives.”

Republicans on the panel say they are hoping to hold committee votes on 10 of the 12 fiscal 2021 government funding bills by the end of June and potentially bring some of those to the floor in June as senators try to get legislation back on track amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’d like to, but I said all of this is tentative at the moment. We’ve been discussing it amongst ourselves,” Shelby added on the possibility of being able to bring some funding bills to the floor for votes in June.

Asked about Blunt’s prediction that the committee could vote on 10 of the 12 bills, Shelby confirmed that was the plan “at this point.”

“To mark up, we want some understanding that we’re going to have some cooperation,” Shelby said.

What won’t be brought up: Shelby pointed to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending bill and a separate bill on military construction and Veterans Affairs (VA).

“[A] bill that might be susceptible to a big political fight over the wall is one,” Shelby said, in a reference to the DHS funding bill.

Reminder: The new timeline comes after GOP members of the Senate Appropriations Committee met this week to discuss a path forward on the fiscal 2021 funding bills as the coronavirus has upended the normal legislative schedule on Capitol Hill.

But senators also pointed to the growing cost of VA health care as another early hurdle. Overall, non-defense spending for fiscal 2021 was agreed to as part of a two-year budget deal, meaning that if senators include more money for the VA without changing the budget cap, they have to strip funding from other non-defense programs.

The VA issue: There is some bipartisan support for treating the extra VA health care costs as “emergency” spending, exempting the funding from the bipartisan budget cap.

“Some of us have advocated we ought to use that as emergency, deem emergency spending. Some people don’t want to do that that way. Some do. That debate’s going on right now,” Shelby told The Hill.

He added in a separate discussion with reporters this week that the VA issue was a “a big problem.”

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